Monday morning we noticed something was odd at Blank Slate. By Monday afternoon we knew that they had closed. Since then there has been much speculation and many varying assumptions about why they closed. But there have been no facts until now.

Jesse and Tom invited Frank Seta, owner and bar tender at the Lucky Turtle, over for a conversation about traveling and beer. We started off with what local Cincinnati beer we’d bring with us on a trip, either to drink by ourselves or share with friends we met along the way. From there the conversation ranged into how to travel with beer, either driving or flying and where to travel with or for beer. We wrapped things up with a discussion on beer destinations cities and if Cincinnati is one, or what it’d take for us to become one.

We also had some technical difficulties while filming, so please forgive the slides at the beginning, the audio is great throughout and the video picks up around the 11-minute mark. We promise to have these issues sorted out before next time.

Jesse and I sat down with Fifty West owner Bobby Slattery to get the details on this weekend’s Punch Out: Round 2 event. We also get treated to early info on cans and bottles coming from Fifty West later this year!

Randy Mosher’s Radical Brewing (buy it on Amazon) is not your normal introductory homebrewing book. I’m a little sad that it took me this long to get around to reading it. It should be the second or third homebrewing book you pick up after How to Brew or Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

I’ve wanted to spend a day at a brewery learning about mobile canning for some time now. But I was lazy and didn’t want to wake up and drive to a brewery to do this. Luckily, FigLeaf is only a few minutes from home and they had Iron Heart Canning (formerly Buckeye Canning) in today to can their Basmati Cream Ale. I reached out to the owners who foolishly allowed me to come help out for the day, here’s my experience.

Jesse Folk, one of the moderators from the Greater Cincinnati Craft Beer Society, joined me at MadTree last night with their Head of Barrel Aging, Simon Kretchik, to talk all things Funk Day 2017 (this Sunday, May 28th at 10 am). We also covered lots of great MadTree info and general sour beer info from TTA to different types of barrels!